Head Space to Make Rye Bread…a Puppet Show…and A Wagon Ride

Today I woke up cheerfully to my new 100 plus year old…or so… house. I had a little pillow fight with my husband for dropping his clothes less than one inch away from the laundry basket. I’m not usually so playful with him and it was refreshing.

Luckily, before things got rolling along too far, I remembered to say a prayer….I prayed to be given greater capabilities than my own skill set aloud, and for more love for the current child sort of on my nerves, unfortunately.

I’d punished all three children from this and that the day before, (to bed early for hurting her sister, no Spanish game this week for taking all day to clean up a tiny mess, and no bike the rest of the week for taking all day to do his school). Consequences like this all in one day is unusual for me, but as a result, all three children woke up with their game on, and they did their little school chores at lightning speed, wow. Cool.

So this factor, along with the prayer help, lent me to feeling extra…umph, and would you believe? I felt like making bread?

We tried something fun and new! Our first rye bread! I was so excited! My friend had even given me previously some caraway seeds…which is rare to have on hand all that the recipe called for…man those seeds made all the difference: GRUB.

Fairy Princess researched Rye Bread recipes since she was the one with the craving for it, and found this one to meet her satisfaction. So this one it was: Soft and Chewy Rye Bread.

This is what I call live Montessori, fine motor skills for a pertinent and real job, grinding wheat.

So, let me explain, what is going on here. This is a clever set up done by the Engineer. We put our wheat grinder in a plastic tote as to alleviate puffs of wheat dust tooting out the sides of the grinder.

This set up was still putting out huge dust clouds out the top where the chord comes out, until with this current move, the Engineer got even more brilliant. He drilled a hole for the chord to go out of so there wasn’t a big crack where the chord used to try to sneak out the top ineffectively. The remainder crack of the drilled hole is stuffed with a rag. You unplug the machine, fill it with wheat, turn it on, put on the lid, and plug it in. Presto. There are then no brief moments where the filterless machine can puff out angry clouds of wheat dust to coat your house with.

And there’s a close up on the drilled hole, chord coming out of it, and stuffed crack via the rag.

Couldn’t have gotten by without a close up of this grinder, could ya have. Look at all that flour not in my kitchen. Man the spilled wheat kernels on the side are rather creepy. Sorry about that.

And yours truly with her wee sixth…Isn’t he a cutie? Yes, he’s bald.

Well, the fun didn’t stop as you may have supposed it would. Hoppity was begging me to come see their puppet show. I just had to grind up three bags of flour to put in the freezer because…even with a tidier method of grinding wheat, its still an ordeal to crank it out and sweep the surrounding inevitable spilled wheat. So, three full flour bags later, I finally came out to see Hoppity’s show. And what a cute little show she put on.

Paul Bunyon, Hoppity’s older brother, made the scenery. On the left is the fence, of course. Then you bump into a tree, the characters for the show, another tree, a house and another tree. It was a very adorable little show.

Since I was outside…and it was a gorgeous day after a very chili previous day, I decided to snap a shot of Paul Bunyon pulling the clan in the wagon their Daddio built them for Christmas. Sorry to crop your head Paul Bunyon, you went a tad faster than I could snap.

Looks like Paul Bunyon is having the most fun of all. Certainly it isn’t Bubsie.

Forming the bread, and learning a little about kneading and forming, and into the oven it went.

I was so glad for that needed prayer, because I’ve not had the umph to make bread, let alone blog it, for a long while. So thank you Heavenly Father for giving me joy and strength this day, so opposite of yesterday when I was anxious, and tired, just wanting to get this unpacking thing done. Today I took time to smell the roses, due to the help from my prayer, and…it seems I got just as much done…a finished unpacked pantry, several loaves of bread, and children who enjoyed my taking time to pay attention to them.